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Page 5 West Vancouver Historical Society March 2005 depended on luck that in time, the law of averages should catch up with everyone. Squadron Leader In August 1917, Ray went on home leave, during which he became engaged to Neita Trapp of New Westminster. It took nearly six years for them to get married, at the pace of Ray’s life. On his return to Europe in 1917 he was posted to the Seaplane Defence Squadron near Dunkirk, in command of A Flight. This certainly sounds as if he should have been flying seaplanes, but in fact the squadron was equipped with the famous Sopwith Camel, a larger and more powerful development of the Pup, this time standardized with two machine guns. The breeches of the guns were enclosed in a “hump” which is what gave the camel its name. In January 1918 this squadron was renamed Naval 13. Ray counted the two months he spent with them as a quiet time. Only once did he fly more than one patrol a day, whereas at Naval 10 two, three of even four were routine. He did, however, gain experience as acting squadron leader when the official squadron leader was injured in an accident. He learned some of the trials of commandâ€"headquarters insisted that he should get up at 4:00 am daily and personally decode meaningless messages. He also learned (or honed) management skills. Any unit Ray commanded had two characteristics. First, all or most of his pilots were Canadian (this dated back to the days of the Black Flight). Secondly, he managed to get experienced and capable pilots, this in the teeth of an official policy hotly opposed to “hand picking pilots to produce super squadrons”. How did he achieve this? I quoteâ€"“I was fortunate enough to have a friend at the Admiralty who was concerned with pilot postings”. In January 1918 he was posted to the substantive command of Naval 3 that also flew Camels, which was based from March onwards at Mont St. Eloi. This was directly in the path of the planned German Spring offensive and the Jastas in the area were reinforced and given new equipment, notably new Fokkers. On March 21, 1918, the attack started with an intense German artillery bombardment and an advance through a thick mist. Ray’s squadron was heavily involved, not just against German fighters but also in desperate low- level bombing and strafing attacks on the advancing German infantry. This cost many pilots their lives, even the experienced ones. You can not dodge bullets from soldiers on the ground that you can not see, no matter how skilful you are. On March 28“’ the Germans had advanced so far that their shells began to land on Mont St. Eloi airfield and the squadron was forced to move to Treizennes. Getting all the equipment and personnel out of the field under shellfire was, in Ray’s words, “a touch and go affair” but it was done. By the end of March the main German attack ran out of steam. but subsidiary attacks and counter-attacks by the allies kept up the air activity, particularly the ground strafing. A German infantry officer described being on the receiving end; “Several tommies flew so low that the wheels of their airplanes touched the ground. My company commander had to throw himself on the ground but for all that he was struck on the back by the wheels of one machine, literally run over.” As squadron leader, Ray was busy with administrative duties and flew less combat patrols, but from the beginning of June he was able to fly regularly. His score of German aircraft shot down, which had been slumping, climbed again. By now he was credited with 47 official victories. All this success didn’t blunt his edge; he still set up and personally led the most hair-raising exploits. With one other pilot he staged a dawn attack on a German airfield and then, having stirred up the hornet’s nest, flew back to the airfield an hour later to see how much damage he’d done. By the summer of 1918, the allied offensives that ended the war were underway. Ray went on flying and building his victories until the armistice with apparently undiminished enthusiasm. His final tally of enemy aircraft shot down stands at 59 or 61, depending on whose records you use. DUNDARAVE BEACH AS IT WAS OVER EIGHTY YEARS AGO. Jack Cruickshank Sr. At Dundarave we found the West Vancouver Amateur Swimming Club progressing very nicely. Most of the campers and a lot of the residents and their children had become members. We did everything we could to encourage the children to improve their swimming and diving. Friends from some of the Vancouver swimming clubs often came over to assist us in coaching the children. During the latter part of the summer of 1920 and the early part of the next summer, at all our meetings we were laying plans for our first regatta in August of 1921. We invited the Vancouver Amateur Swimming Club, the Crescent Beach Swimming Club and the White Rock Swimming Club to send competitors. We arranged quite a programme of events for all ages from the small children to the adults in both swimming and diving. We brought rope and wooden floats to line of the lanes for the swimming events. We erected a three-metre and a five-metre diving platform at the south end. Knowing we could have a large crowd of spectators from West Vancouver and also from Vancouver and the other swimming lessons, we bought lumber and erected tiers of seats along the pier above the tank. L. Allan Clampitt, who was a tug boat captain, arranged to rent a scow and brought it over from Vancouver and anchored it on the east side of the swimming tank We erected tiers of seats on the scow. Phil Chapman usually took charge of building the seats with the help of some of the campers. If I remember right, I think we charged 50?i for adults and 150 for children. We bought Continued on Page 8